Question: would you rather be a theoretical physicist or an experimental physcist if you had the choice?

Jaclyn Bell answered on 6 Mar 2015:

Hmmm this is a good question! In particle physics I think it is good to be a theorist because you can make theories and predictions about new particles, like Peter Higgs did with the Higgs boson, long before experimentalists find them in the colliders. Also, if experimentalists stumble across something new you can use their results to predict whats going on without having to analyse all of the data from the thousands of collisions yourself – which can take a really long time! So I guess with choice I would still be a theorist, but there is no reason why you can’t do a bit of both or switch from one to the other later on if you changed your mind 🙂